By Syriana Analysis ~ On Nov. 2017, Kevork Almassian held a presentation at Berlin Reykjavik Damascus event in Berlin, explaining the effects of Western economic sanction in worsening the humanitarian conditions in Syria, and also shedding a light on the latest military developments in the county.

Trump Signs Sanctions Bill – Another Deep State Victory

President Trump signed the Russia, Iran, North Korea sanctions bill, which restricts his ability to improve relations with any of the three countries absent explicit Congressional approval. Is the deep state in total control of U.S. foreign policy?

PUTIN STRIKES BACK: Hundreds of U.S. Diplomatic Staff to be Expelled From Russia

Moscow has told the US to reduce the number of its diplomatic staff in Russia from 1100 to 455 people, and is also halting the use of embassy storage facilities in the capital, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

TURN ON ENGLISH SUBTITLESThe new round of U.S. sanctions against Russia is “extremely cynical,” President Vladimir Putin said, accusing Washington of using its political advantage for business purposes.

Question: Indeed, Russia and the other parties differ on the Syrian issue regarding primarily the fate of Bashar al-Assad, whom the Western countries have accused of using chemical weapons against his own people. Mr President, can you envision Syria’s political future without Bashar al-Assad?

Vladimir Putin: I do not think I have the right to determine the political future of Syria, be it with or without al-Assad. This is for the Syrians themselves to decide. Nobody has the right to claim the rights that belong to the people of another country. This is the first thing I wanted to say.

If chemical weapons were used by President al-Assad’s official agencies, modern verification equipment would certainly find traces of this at the airfield. For certain. These traces would be found in the aircraft and at the airfield. However, everyone refused to conduct such an inspection.

We also proposed sending inspectors to the site of the alleged chemical attack. But they refused as well, claiming that it was dangerous. Why is this dangerous if the attack was delivered at an area where peaceful civilians live and the healthy part of the armed opposition is deployed?

In my opinion, the accusations have been made for the sole purpose of justifying the use of additional measures, including military ones, against al-Assad. That is all. There is no proof that al-Assad has used chemical weapons. We firmly believe that that this is a provocation. President al-Assad did not use chemical weapons…………………

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said it is “bewildered and disappointed” over new US sanctions targeting eight Russian companies, including defense firms and pilot training academies, which the State Department claims engage in “proliferation” activity with Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Paul Graig Robers, former Assistant Secretary of US Treasury, talks to RT on the issue.

While the restrictions will cause “no serious problems” for Russia, they undermine the fight against global terrorism, which Washington has been claiming is its priority, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

“This step runs counter to the statements we hear from Washington that emphasize the fight against terrorism, in particular in Syria, where it has gained a foothold. On the contrary, it is completely at odds with such declarations and undermines the prospects of setting up comprehensive multilateral cooperation to destroy Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS,ISIL] and other terrorist groups that pose a threat to all countries, including the US,” Zakharova said.
“Washington again does the bidding of those who made a consistent destruction of Russia-US cooperation their main priority. These people have long been searching for enemies in the place where they don’t really exist. Such an approach does not obviously meet the security interests of the US,” Zakharova said………………………

The head of the Belgian delegation currently visiting Syria, member of Belgium’s Federal Parliament Filip Dewinter, said that the delegation’s members will pressure the Belgian Parliament and the international organizations in which they work to lift the economic embargo imposed on Syria, noting that they witnessed during their visits to hospitals and housing centers that the embargo is affecting the Syrian people directly.

In a press conference held on Sunday evening at the new press office at the People’s Assembly, Dewinter stressed the need to unite efforts to fight terrorism in Syria, adding that the Wahabi terrorists who are backed by Arab Gulf states and Turkey want to destroy Syria and its secular values.

Dewinter said the Western economic sanctions on Syria are an act of “dictatorship” and harsh violence against the Syrian people because they have affected the humanitarian and livelihood aspects of their lives denying them access to medicines and food, describing these sanctions by “stupid”……………………

Speaking to TASS on Thursday, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said he believes “many countries, including those very certain about their own democracy, should stop to think if they really match their own ideas of themselves or always obey orders from one leader.”

“Today many say only very bad things about Russia, about threats allegedly posed by your country, but they do not know what really happens in reality,” he added.

Referring to sanctions imposed by Western countries against Russia, Nikolic said that if Serbia followed in the footsteps of those nations, it would have “ruined everything that we have achieved of years and centuries just for the sole reason somebody ordered us to do so.”

The leader said that “nobody will ever be able to issue any orders to my country”…

US and EU sanctions against Syria are punishing the population and make aid work in the war-torn country almost impossible, a leaked UN report and internal letters have revealed. ~ The restrictive measures contributed to the destabilization of every sector of the economy in Syria that used to be self-sufficient before the war began in 2011. ~ The country now heavily depends on aid, which is hard to deliver as sanctions make medicine, food, fuel, spare parts and other essentials unreachable, a 40-page UN report, cited by The Intercept, stressed. ~ According to the UN, the sanctions introduced by Washington are extremely harsh regarding provision of humanitarian aid. ~ The American restrictions made money transfers into Syria almost impossible, preventing aid groups from paying salaries and purchasing supplies “in both government and besieged areas,” the report said. It stimulated the creation of a shady, unofficial network of money exchange, which is actively being used by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists. (…read more…).
(submitted by ‘Lone Bear‘)

Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari said on Wednesday that terrorism and unilateral, coercive measures imposed on the Syrian people are the main reasons behind the paralysis in the economic life and destruction of infrastructure and the departure of large numbers of Syrians from their country.

Syria strongly condemned the decision of the Council of the European Union (EU) to extend the unilaterally-imposed restrictive measures against it for another year.

In its decision issued last Thursday, the Council of the European Union extended sanctions it has gradually imposed on Syria since 2011, which have worked in favor of the terrorists operating in Syria and are aimed at pressuring the Syrian government and people into changing their position.

While the Western-led, anti-Assad bloc mind-blowingly speaks of arming non-existent “moderates” to fight in Syria, they also continue to demonize and silence the very voices that offer a true means of bringing peace and stability back to the region.

Two of these voices are: Political and Media Adviser to President al-Assad, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban; and Syria’s highest Muslim official and scholar, Grand Mufti Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun. Both are highly-educated and convey messages of dialogue, understanding, and peace. And both seemingly terrify the West, which has been quick to sanction and deny them visas, lest the anti-Syria lies and propaganda be challenged before a Western audience.

Mufti Hassoun calls his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Bishop Luca al-Khoury, his cousin and brother. “Our grandfathers, 1,400 years ago, were one family. My grandfather embraced Islam and his remained Christian.” He maintains that he, as Grand Mufti, serves the Syrian people, period. “In Syria, there are 23 million Christians, and 23 million Muslims. My title is Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic, not the Mufti of a particular denomination.”

Political and Media Adviser to President al-Assad, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban: “Not only has the West backed and trained terrorists in Syria, the so-called “opposition” they hand-picked to represent Syrians can’t even pretend to do so. “They adopted personalities who haven’t lived in Syria for 30 years! Further, they took the wrong step in closing embassies, instead of communicating with us and observing from the ground. In the name of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ they are destroying our country”.

“Syria was formerly one of the fastest developing countries in the world, and one of the safest. We have free education and health care. We did not know poverty; we grew our food and produced our own clothing. At universities, 55 percent of the students were women.” Already, these are points the West would prefer remain unheard, points which dispute the lies that Syrians were living in miserable oppression prior to the faux-revolution, and also which could not be said about NATO’s Gulf state allies.

“The souk of Aleppo was the most beautiful. It’s now rubble, they destroyed it. In whose interest is it to destroy this heritage? Who is the beneficiary of this? I’m sure if the American public knew the truth about what is happening in Syria they wouldn’t accept Syrian people being slaughtered”.

“I told them, ‘We have baths which are over 1,000 years old and still functioning. I studied Shelley: they didn’t have baths 800 years ago in England. We did, we were having baths and coffee,’” she relates with a laugh. “Stop calling for us to be civilized. We are civilized!”

On the note of religion, Shaaban embodies the secular coexistence that is Syria. “I’m a Muslim, but I feel am partly Christian. I visit (Christian towns of) Saydnaya and Ma’loula. I celebrate Christmas, because it is something that I feel. There is an Arabic proverb which says: ‘Differences don’t mean that you don’t love one another.’ We each have our own different ways of life.”

Mufti Hassoun calls his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Bishop Luca al-Khoury, his cousin and brother. “Our grandfathers, 1,400 years ago, were one family. My grandfather embraced Islam and his remained Christian.” He maintains that he, as Grand Mufti, serves the Syrian people, period. “In Syria, there are 23 million Christians, and 23 million Muslims. My title is Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic, not the Mufti of a particular denomination”… … …

President Nicolas Maduro said the country’s National Assembly elections must go on “whether the empire wants it or not.”

The Venezuelan National Asembly passed the enabling law that allows the country’s president to act to protect the peace against recent threats made by the United States government of Barack Obama.

The bill, which received 99 percent of votes from the Great Patriotic Pole alliance – the largest voting bloc in the assembly, will now move to a second reading for final approval. The move follows a statement by the United States government Monday that declared Venezuela a “threat to the national security” and calling a national emergency.

The US strategy of economic sanctions against Russia is designed to create a “permanent war zone” in that region and cause chaos in the Russian economy, a geopolitical analyst in Europe says.

“When we are looking at the strategy of the US towards Russia, it is to force Russia to capitulate,” said Joaquin Flores, director of the Center for Syncretic Studies in Belgrade, Serbia.

“Ultimately, one thing they would like to do is to create a permanent war zone or a permanent area of armed conflict right in its historical sphere of influence”.

“The US has increased its bellicosity, it is on a war footing and it is definitely trying to create the sense in the international community and within the military-industrial-complex that war is on the horizon”.

(By Alexander Mercouris ~ Russia Insider) ~ The Russians called the EU’s bluff by pulling out of the project instead of accepting the EU’s conditions and are cutting deals with China and Turkey instead.

The reaction to the cancellation of the Sound Stream project has been a wonder to behold and needs to be explained very carefully.

In order to understand what has happened it is first necessary to go back to the way Russian-European relations were developing in the 1990s.

… … … the Europeans did not envisage that Russia would just supply them with energy. … … … The EU calls this “energy security” – a euphemism for the extraction of energy in other countries by its own companies under its own control.

The reason the Russians decided they could cancel it is because they have decided Russia’s future is in selling its energy to China and Turkey and other states in Asia (more gas deals are pending with Korea and Japan and possibly also with Pakistan and India) than to Europe. … That is why in their characteristically direct way, rather than accept the Europeans’ conditions, the Russians pulled the plug on it… … … Under pressure from individuals like Senator John McCain, the Bulgarian leadership behaved like the provincial politicians they are, and tried to run at the same time with both the EU hare and the Russian hounds. The result of this imbecile policy is to offend Russia, Bulgaria’s historic ally, whilst ensuring that the Russian gas which might have flown to Bulgaria and transformed the country, will instead flow to Turkey, Bulgaria’s historic enemy… … …

Putin, thanks to the sanctions against Russia (unfortunate and uncoordinated maneuvers to try to weaken the Asian Bear), uses the weakness of relations between the US and its allies, put a neck loop to Erdogan’s Turkey, excludes from the game the unreliable and corrupted Bulgaria, puts in line the European puppets, strengthens the role of unquestionable Russian leadership on the international chessboard.

Putin, in few cheeky and daring moves, beats the competition of the regimes of the Gulf (offering an immediate opportunity of oil industry for the Turks vultures), turning them away from the ambitions on Syrian oil fields and from an impossible pipeline from the south’s regimes (Saudi-Qatar), trapped in the Daesh’s quicksands of Iraq…

Only a true master of chess and judo (judo uses the energy of the opponents to turn it against them) can be able to take advantage from the foolhardy attacks of his opponents, and the Russian government, headed by Putin, is demonstrating a great strategic ability, but also the capacity to unite to pacify, rather than divide by wage war.

The game is fully open and to play, with a scenario that changes unpredictably, day by day: do not underestimate the chessplayer Putin and never take for granted his moves…

NOTICE TO READERS

These infos are not intended to be shocking or to glorify violence in any way. These articles/images/videos are for educational purposes only, for documenting and try to explain the backdrop of a historical ruthless and bloody war, whose characteristics and details are routinely distorted and smothered by the dominant media.